The Afterlife of the Dead: Reform in Attitude Towards Medieval Burials, Corpses and Bones
The International Medieval Congress is taking place at the University of Leeds, I’m on hand this week to report on the conference. This blog post reports on my first session.
Foundation Myths in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
The 3 papers featured here looked at the development of the civic identities of Florence, Genoa and Rome through art, architecture and foundation legends.
Katherine of Alexandria: Decline of an Empire
According to hagiographers, (C)Katherine was a princess, the daughter of Roman governor named Constus. She was well educated, beautiful and highly intelligent. She converted to Christianity at the age of 13 or 14 and caught the eye of the Roman Emperor, Maxentius (278-318 AD).
Environmental Crusading: The Teutonic Knight’s Impact After the Baltic Crusades
Environmental archaeologist and Professor of Archeology at Reading, Dr. Aleks Pluskowski, examined Malbork and several other sites across Eastern and Northern Europe in his recent paper, The Ecology of Crusading: The Environmental Impact of Holy War, Colonisation, and Religious Conversion in the Medieval Baltic. Pluskowski is keenly interested in the impact the Teutonic Knights and Christian colonisation had on the region. His ambitious 4 year project on the ecological changes in this area recently came to a close at the end of 2014.
Choosing Heaven: The Religion of the Vikings
The Viking-age gods stemmed from two races – Aesir and Vanir.
‘Hag of the Castle:’ Women, Family, and Community in Later Medieval Ireland
In a letter written as part of his work for the Irish Department of the Ordnance Survey in 1840, Thomas O’Conor recorded his reaction to a “Sheela- na-gig” sculpture—the image of a naked woman shown exposing her genitalia (fig. 1)—that he saw on the old church at Kiltinane, Co. Tipperary.
CONFERENCES: The Stellinga, the Saxon Elite, and Carolingian Politics
This is my summary of a paper presented at the Institute of Historical Research on the causes of the Stellinga uprising in the Carolingian period.
Nourishment for the Soul – Nourishment for the Body: Animal Remains in Early Medieval Pomeranian Cemeteries
Late medieval sources clearly refer to souls, which in traditional folk beliefs were periodically returning to feed and warm themselves by the fires made by the living. This kind of conception can be merged with Slavic eschatology. There is multiple evidence to confirm that belief some form of spirit or soul was spreading amongst the people, who in the early medieval period, bordered directly with Pomerania.
Bárðar saga as a source for reconstruction of pre-Christian religion?
Paper by Eldar Heide given at the second meeting of the Old Norse Folklorist Network
The Goddess Frig: Reassessing an Anglo-Saxon Deity
The world of the Anglo-Saxon gods will forever remain a mystery to us, existing just beyond the reach of written history.
ARTICLES: The Deflation of the Medieval in Joyce’s Ulysses
For James Joyce, Irish nationalism, with its appeal to patriotic emotionality and promotion of interest in the archaic and medieval Irish past, was suspect.
Fast and Feast – Christianization through the Regulation of Everyday Life
This article will illustrate that an important part of rulers’ wish to create a Christian society was the introduction of Christian legislation.
Hungary’s Conversion to Christianity: The Establishment of Hungarian Statehood and its Consequences to the Thirteenth Century
The Carpathian Basin occupies a peculiar place in history. It was the ground where Roman-Germanic world met that of the Slavs and mounted nomad peoples, where no group had achieved sustained unity before the state of Hungary was founded.
Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia
Saints’ cults played a crucial role in medieval society. Although we know very little about the beliefs and rituals of the indigenous peoples of Livonia, either before or after the thirteenth-century conquest, we may assume that the process of Christianization must have caused major changes in their religious practices.
To Be or Not to Be… a Christian: Some New Perspectives on Understanding the Christianisation of Estonia
The Christianisation of Estonia has been a subject of extensive research already for a couple of centuries. Archaeologists generally agree that some elements of Christian religion were present in Estonia already prior to official Christianisation at the beginning of the 13th century.
Death as an architect of societies Burial and social identity during the Viking Age in South-western Scania
In my opinion, the mono-cultural Viking Age is largely the product of one past social group, that had imposed on us their narration about the events, through production of tangible and durable monuments and sources. If analysis of the past should be of any value, it needs to be not only specifically spatially located, but also socially located.
Making Sacrifices: Beowulf and Film
This essay reviews opening scenes in some recent film Beowulfs, which, although they have nothing at all to say about Scyld Scefing, suggest a sacrificial reading of the prologue and perhaps even the whole poem.
The Uses Made of History by the Kings of Medieval England
The kings of medieval England, besides using history for the entertainment of themselves and their courts, turned it to practical purposes. They plundered history-books for precedents and other evidences to justify their claims and acts. They also recognised its value as propaganda, to bolster up their positions at home and strengthen their hands abroad.
Viking Human Sacrifices: Hollywood vs Reality
In his article, ‘Plastic Pagans: Viking Human Sacrifice in Film and Television’, Harry Brown notes a very key difference between how it is being portrayed and how it was in reality.
Approaches to paganism and uses of the pre-Christian past in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Snorri Sturluson
The dissertation is a comparative analysis of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s and Snorri Sturlusson’s descriptions of paganism and uses of pre-Christian history. What was the function of these pre-Christian narratives, and what apporaches were used by the two authors to construct a complete image of the past, acceptable to their contemporary societies?
The Origins of the Tale of the Blood Drinking Hungarians
The motif of the covenant of blood was quite widespread in West European chronicle literature, and it was not necessarily applied to Oriental peoples, nor particularly to Hungarians.
Some Considerations Regarding the Slavic God Triglav
This article presents a description Triglav, a god or complex of gods in Slavic mythology.
St. Patrick’s Irish Pride
In honour of the day, it seems fitting to throw out some interesting facts about St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
A Comparative Analysis Of Early Medieval North-West Slavonic And West Baltic Sacred Landscapes
The major aim of our paper is to present a comparative analysis of early medieval north-west Slavonic and Prussian objects and places which are interpreted in a sacral context.